Charm His Pants Off

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Most people when they think of winter imagine a Christmas scene, or perhaps something related to New Year's Eve: people gathered in warmth and light, the cold dark kept safely on the other side of frosted windows. But to me, that's not really winter. That's just the first tease of what's to come.

And this had been a very fine winter so far. Lots of snow, but when it hadn't been snowing the sky had been clear and blue, the sun shining brightly if with little heat. I love snow and ice and every activity that involves them, but even I can feel my mood lifted when constantly bathed in sunlight.

Not that I had much time for winter sports. No, it wasn't skiing or skating or snowboarding keeping me out in the cold sun every morning.

It was the time portal. The three of us could do magic from anywhere, but for the delicate spells that kept the protective wards on the time portal strong, it was better to be just at the spot in the orchard where 2019 met the bridge back to 1928.

The three of us were out there for hours every morning. We hadn't seen a single sign of anyone trying to get across or even just probe our wards in search of weaknesses, but we had all agreed it was best to err on the side of caution.

So each day just after dawn we'd meet out in the frozen orchard under the glistening, icicle-laden boughs of the fruit treesg to work magic together. We never spoke a word until we were done, but we no longer needed to use our voices to communicate. We sensed each other's intentions as we passed the magical energy between us. It was not quite reading each other's minds, but it was scarily close.

On that particular morning, I was certain the other two were tuning out the soreness I was feeling all over my body. I had added weight to nearly every lift when working out the day before. It had felt great yesterday, and it was awesome to get back into a weightlifting regime after so many years of missed workouts.

But when I woke up, I had felt like I'd been trampled by a herd of angry bulls. I had tried to do a little yoga before coming out to the yard, but my arms and legs were still trembling as we worked the spell, and I could see Brianna and Sophie out of the corners of my eyes. Their up-raised arms were trembling too.

At least Sophie had found a warmer parka and wool pants, so she was no longer setting us all shivering in sympathy to the cold air biting deep into her Southern bones.

I don't know how to explain what we were doing since there was nothing we were seeing, but we all three felt a ball of energy moving around, sometimes in the center of our little circle and sometimes moving from one to the other of us. We didn't direct it; it just knew where all three of us wanted it to go. It was strange, that feeling of controlling it but also of having no control.

Sophie made a spinning motion with her arms as if she had that ball close to her chest and was wrapping it in protective warmth. Then she floated it over to me, and as so often happened when Sophie's magic touched me, I smelled jasmine and rich coffee, and a rush of warmth filled me.

That was nice, that warmth. It loosened my muscles just a bit, took the edge off the aching soreness.

I also got a glimpse of what Sophie had seen, the way she used magic to sense things, and particularly to sense the time portal and the wards. I brought that sense with me like a hand-drawn map as I sunk deep into my own perceptions of the world as a web of bright threads. My mind raced over the network of connections.

As always, I sensed the presence of Juno, or benefactor's sister, caught up in the web of threads that was the bridge. But, as always, she didn't answer my call. Why did she hide, only emerging at the most inopportune of moments? Why couldn't we speak to her when the world was calm and actual conversations would be possible?

I felt the energy flow away from me, and I concentrated my mind on making a last snapshot of the thread world before that flow passed from me to Brianna.

Brianna's fingers danced as if she were playing an instrument or typing on a computer at lightning speed. She was so full of magic her hair was floating up behind her like Superman's cape, snapping with more than mere static electricity. I felt the hairs on the back of my own neck start to lift as well, a tickly sensation.

Then suddenly my mind was full of chatter, random words that eluded my efforts to string them together. It was like a hundred half-formed thoughts all overlapping.

I didn't realize we had all been floating until we all fell at once, slipping on the icy snow to land on our backsides, hair spilling down in a perfectly ordinary way.

"What was that?" Sophie asked, pressing her mittened hand to her forehead.

"Did something just try to communicate with us?" I asked. "Something… alien?"

"Sorry," Brianna said, her cheeked flushed red, not from the cold. "Sorry. I tried to hold it back."

"Hold what back?" I asked.

"My thoughts," she said. "Oh, how embarrassing to lose control like that. I completely lost my still pond."

"Your still pond?" Sophie asked.

"That's the image I use to quiet my mind for magical work," Brianna said, still blushing furiously.

"Those were your thoughts?" I asked. She nodded. "I couldn't catch a single one of them."

"Me neither," Sophie said. "Is it always like that in your head?"

"No," Brianna said, but the way she wouldn't meet our eyes made me doubt she was being entirely honest. She added, so softly we could barely hear the words, "I can follow it all."

"Well, all of the protections on the time portal looked in order to me," I said, getting up and brushing the snow from my backside.

"Me too," Sophie said, accepting my hand up.

"And here I was worried I was distracting the two of you with my exhausted muscles."

"I think body information is easier to tune out than mind information," Sophie said, but she was rolling her shoulders in a way that looked like it would work out the kink I had there. I don't think she knew she was doing it.

"That's probably true," Brianna said. "I try to keep my filters up for just that reason. But the picture of the thread world that moved from Amanda to me was just so much clearer than ever before; it was overwhelming. It gave me so many ideas of things I want to explore and research and test."

"I've been getting a clearer picture too," Sophie said. "We've made a lot of progress so far this year."

"But there's so much further to go," Brianna said. "If only we knew what we were up against."

"Twelve plus Evanora," I said. "That's what Otto said."

"But is that twelve witches?" Brianna asked. "Maybe they're not all witches. The coven back in Boston only had a couple of real witches in it."

"For that matter, there could be more than twelve too," Sophie said. "Amanda didn't know how many she was sensing surrounding her at the New Year's Eve party."

"Until we go back, we can't know for sure," I said.

"And we're not ready to go back," Brianna said. "Not yet."

We'd been having various versions of this conversation for six weeks now.

"Let's go in," Sophie said, thrusting her mittened hands into the pockets of her parka and hunching down inside its collar. "Lunch will warm us up."

Brianna and I nodded, and the three of us tromped across the snow to the back door.

"I just feel like they're waiting for us, just on the other side of the bridge," Brianna said.

"None of us have sensed that," I said.

"No, but all the same. I feel like they are. They're waiting for us to make the first move," she said.

"Or we hope they are," Sophie said as she pulled open the door and we quickly passed into the solarium, shutting the door before shedding our layers of outdoor clothing. "They could be doing anything back in 1928. How would we know?"

"Anything big would have a historical effect," Brianna said.

"There's a lot of nonhistorical level stuff they could do that could harm us," Sophie said.

"Let's not get too worried about hypotheticals," I said. "Especially not when Mr. Trevor made us something that smells absolutely divine. Is that pumpkin soup?"

"Indeed it is," he said as we came into the kitchen. He had heard us come in and was already filling bowls and setting them on the kitchen table where a basket of bread rolls and a dish of butter were waiting.

"Hot soup," Sophie said, sliding into her chair. I swear she had a spoonful in her mouth before she'd even settled onto her seat. "Warm perfection."

"I'm glad you like it," Mr. Trevor said. "Any plans for the day?"

"Just the usual," I said as I buttered a roll. "Brianna will be hitting the library to follow up on that barrage of thoughts that she just washed over Sophie and me with. I have another cleansing ritual to do with my wand down in the cellar; hopefully, this one will do the trick but who knows. Sophie?"

"Wand work for me too," she said. "I promise not to set the floorboards on fire again."

"That is, of course, appreciated," Mr. Trevor said. "But what I was actually inquiring about was this evening. Will we all be eating together, or were any of you going out?"

We all looked at each other and shook our heads.

"Why do you ask?" Sophie asked. Mr. Trevor generally just left food out for each of us to eat whenever we were hungry. "Were you going out? Because we can totally fend for ourselves. You spoil us, you know."

"No, I had no plans," Mr. Trevor said. "I was just planning a special dessert. Chocolate lava cakes. But they are best eaten when they’re still warm, so we should plan to all sit down together."

"That sounds amazing," Sophie said.

"But why the special dessert?" I asked.

Mr. Trevor looked at me like he thought I was joking. Then he looked at Brianna, who had stopped listening to the conversation a few moments ago and was scribbling in her notebook, and finally Sophie, who looked as curious as I was.

"Well, it's Valentine's Day," he said. "None of you had plans?"

"Not this year," Sophie said glumly, drawing swirls in the bottom of her soup bowl with her spoon.

"No, not me," I said. I had on occasion seen Nick jog past the charm school, his grandfather's Irish setter Finnegan trotting beside him, but we hadn't spoken yet that year. I had occasionally felt the urge to run out and bump into him, but I had no idea what I'd say. The fact that I was a witch would always be a wall between us now that he knew, whether or not I was actively messing in his world of police work by investigating some crime that crossed the time portal or not.

Mr. Trevor looked at Brianna scribbling away until she sensed him waiting for her to speak.

"No plans," she said. "Just research in the library with my cats."

The trio of stray cats that Brianna had adopted at Christmas had the run of the entire house, but much like Brianna they mainly stayed in the library. She loved them to bits but hadn't seen the point in giving them actual names. Sophie and I had finally been compelled to name them ourselves. The black cat with the white spot under his chin was Jones, the ginger one with the crook in his tail was Ziggy, and the white one with one green eye and one blue eye was Duke.

"I hope it's not a sensitive topic," Mr. Trevor said.

"Not at all," I said, and Sophie gave him a smile that almost looked genuine.

"We have a deeper calling," she said. "And there's no one I'd rather spend any holiday at all with than my housemates."

"Splendid," Mr. Trevor said, clapping his hands together. "Than shall we gather in the dining room this evening at six o'clock?"

"Sounds great," I said. Sophie nodded. Mr. Trevor glanced at Brianna. "I'll make sure she's there on time," I promised.

"Thank you," he said, then left the kitchen, his footsteps echoing up the back stairs to his personal office.

"You still haven't talked to Nick," Sophie said.

"No," I said. "But what about you?"

"Me?" Sophie said. "I've not met a single person since I moved here. Not in the present, anyway."

"I know," I said. "I just meant, the way you said you had no plans this year. It kind of sounded like other years you did."

"I did," Sophie said, getting up to take her bowl to the sink and rinse it out before putting it in the dishwasher. She dried her hands on a towel, but I could tell she felt my eyes still on her. "That was back in New Orleans."

"Maybe there's a way you can take a break and get away-" I started to say, but Sophie shook her head.

"No," she said. "Everything nearly fell apart when you left last fall."

"Brianna and I are both stronger now," I said, and Brianna looked up, confused, upon hearing her name.

"Yes, but back then we didn't even have an enemy to guard against," Sophie said.

"Not that we knew of," I said.

"No, I can't go," Sophie said. "Not now, and perhaps not ever. That's the commitment we all made to Miss Zenobia. I won't go back on my word."

I looked to Brianna for backup, but she just gave me a sad little shake of her head. "Sophie's right. For all we know, Evanora and her cohorts will know if any of us leave. They might be waiting for just that opportunity."

"All the more reason to call them out," I said.

"Not yet," Sophie said. Brianna's hand touched my arm, and I realized my own hands had balled into tight fists. I was always too eager to get the fight over with.

"I hate waiting," I grumbled, but forced my body to relax.

"We're not waiting," Sophie said, taking the two remaining bowls off the table and bringing them to the sink. "We're preparing."

"But at some point, we're as prepared as well can be," I said. "Will we know when we reach that point?"

"We will," Brianna said. "We'll know."

I was doubtful, but there was no point in arguing about it all afternoon. Even if it was a nice excuse to procrastinate on checking on my wand. My traitorous, spying wand.

We were just giving each other little nods of farewell, me to head to the solarium and get back into my coat and boots to head down to the cellar, Brianna and Sophie to head up to the library and attic respectively, when we all froze in place at the sound of a knock on the door.

A perfectly mundane knock at the door, and yet a tingle of fear was dancing up my spine. And Brianna and Sophie were similarly struck, eyes wide, none of us moving.

"It could be a package or something," I said. But we never got packages.

"Well, there's one way to find out," Sophie said and headed down the long corridor to the front door.

For a moment I was convinced it would be Nick standing there, perhaps with a single rose in his outstretched hand, showing up completely out of the blue just because it was Valentine's Day.

Ugh. Sometimes my brain can be so stupid. There was no hope of that. Summoning up the image just made me feel worse than before.

So it was a little startling when the first thing I glimpsed as the door swung open was indeed a single red rose. But the man holding it wasn't Nick. It was no one I recognized.

No, this was an attractive young black man about our age. And judging from his clothing, he wasn't a local. He was dressed far too lightly for the weather, his jacket little more than a windbreaker, his boots totally inadequate for more than a light rain. His head was half shaved, half tightly breaded cornrows swept up into a topknot that looked sleekly dignified but in no way kept his ears warm.

He stood there smiling warmly at Sophie, waiting for her to say something first or to take the flower he was still holding out for her.

But finally the cold defeated him, and he decided to make the next move. "Hello, Sophie," he said. "Long time no see."

Sophie said nothing at all. She just let her hand drop away from the door, and the door swung back shut right in that man's startled face.